survive the stroke of death, and that he will be held responsible in the world beyond the grave for his conduct here, are above the appreciation of an overwhelming majority of mankind. Full well might we have expected, when we consider the supreme importance to each individual man of the question whether his condition in the unseen world will be dependent on his conduct here, that this all-important truth would have been made one of those certitudes on which it would have been impossible to have entertained a doubt. But here, as in numerous other instances, our à priori ideas as to what ought to be, fail to conduct us to a knowledge of what actually is. Why it is, that the great masses of mankind have been left in such uncertainty on a subject which concerns their deepest interests, is one of those mysteries in the Divine government of the world into which with our limited powers it is impossible to penetrate. We can only say with the Apostle, "The times of this ignorance God overlooked; but now," having revealed the great truth of the responsibility of man, "he commandeth all men that they should everywhere repent; inasmuch as he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by the man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead."

In conclusion, let it be observed that none of the above reasonings are adequate to prove the immortality of man. All that they really prove is that his personality will survive the dissolution of his body. It is generally assumed that reasonings which avail to prove man's survival after death are equally valid to prove his immortality; or, as it is commonly conceived, that the righteous will continue to exist in happiness and the wicked in misery for evermore. this is a conclusion which the premisses will not justify. On the contrary, judging by analogy, as disease destroys the body, so sin may be ultimately destructive of the being of the

But

sinner.

The whole question of immortality depends on the will, purposes, and character of God. This the New Testament promises to the righteous, who may safely commit all cares about the future to that God in whom, by abiding in love, they abide, and He in them; whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and whose dominion will endure for

evermore.

CHAPTER V.

THE IMPERFECTION OF THE LIGHT WHICH THE SCRIPTURES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT THROW ON THE CONDITION OF MAN AFTER DEATH.

IN considering this subject it is necessary that the student should never lose sight of the fact that the Old Testament is not a single book, but consists of a number of small treatises, which were composed by not less than fifty writers, who were separated from one another by wide intervals of time, and who derived their materials from various sources of information. As the question of the date of these various writings is one which is greatly debated among critics, it will be impossible to examine them in historical order.

We will, therefore, begin with the Pentateuch, although we are fully aware that there are not a few critics who assign to large portions of it a late date; yet even these allow that portions of its contents are unquestionably Mosaic. Taking, then, the Pentateuch as a whole, it is obvious to every reader that not a single passage can be found in it which affirms in so many words that man will survive the stroke of death. All that can be said is, that it contains a few passages from which a belief in a future state may be inferred, but direct affirmations it has none. This absence of all direct reference to the subject is a most remarkable fact, whatever view we may take of its authorship. If the whole

is Mosaic, it follows that Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, of which wisdom we have the strongest evidence that the doctrine of a future state formed an important portion,* must have deliberately excluded it from forming one of the sanctions on which his legislation rested. This is equally true if he is the author of only portions of the Pentateuch. If, on the other hand, we concur with those critics who ascribe the authorship of the Book of Deuteronomy to the prophet Jeremiah, then the absence of any direct allusion to this doctrine in this book, as well as in that of the prophet, is the more striking, because the intercourse between Egypt and Judea was considerable, not only in his time, but also in that of Solomon, and the evidence of the Egyptian belief on this subject must have been patent to the eye of every traveller. Further, if we accept the views of those critics who are of opinion that the ritual and sacrificial portions of the Pentateuch were written subsequent to the captivity, the absence in them of any direct allusion to a future state is even more difficult to account for, because long prior to the persecutions of the Syrian Kings, it had become an article of popular belief; and unless the records of the Maccabee martyrs are misleading, they were sustained in the endurance of their terrible sufferings by the hope of a resurrection. Whatever view, therefore, we may take, either of the date or of the authorship of the Pentateuch, the absence from it of any direct reference to a future state of retribution, and the enforcement of its legislation by purely temporal considerations, is a fact the singularity of which cannot be denied.

Although the Pentateuch contains no one single direct

* The book called "The Ritual of the Dead" was in existence long anterior to the time of Moses, and being learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, it is impossible that he was not acquainted with it. Besides, every mummy case bears witness that a belief in a future state, in some form or other, and even in a judgment to come, was deeply impressed on national mind.

affirmation that man will survive the stroke of death, a few passages exist in it from which it may be made a matter of inference. Of these by far the most important is that cited by our Lord in his controversy with the Sadducees :

"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." "God," says he, "is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

Yet all that our Lord here affirms is, that a belief in a future state, or in a resurrection, is a just inference from this Divine declaration. In St. Luke's record of our Lord's words there is an intimation that the teaching of the Pentateuch on this subject was obscure; "For," says he, “that the dead are raised even Moses showed in the place concerning the bush." The words "even Moses" imply either that the Sadducees would receive no doctrine as true except it could be proved from the Mosaic writings, or else, that although a belief in a future state, or a resurrection, was nowhere directly affirmed in them, yet it might be inferred from the above Divine declaration.

There is also a passage in the story of Balaam and Balak which forms a kind of episode, and is apparently introduced into the narrative from an independent source of information, which contains an apparent reference to a future state. The ungodly prophet is represented as saying, "May I die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like his." These words affirm that in the opinion of the speaker it would be better to die the death of the righteous than the death of the wicked, and, consequently, are an expression of a belief on the part of Balaam in a future state of retribution. There is also another passage which, very singular to say, occurs in the midst of the genealogies of the antediluvian patriarchs, from which a similar inference may be drawn:

"And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." (Gen. v. 24.)